The Great Green Sea

Around here we spend all winter longing for Spring grass. It always starts in slow, kind of like the tide coming in, and then all of a sudden there is a tidal wave of grass. We manage our pastures/hayfields using rotational grazing. What that means is that we subdivide the pastures and only give the livestock access to enough for 1 day. We have 4 or 5 sets of portable temporary fence which we keep moving to form the next paddock, leapfrog style. This time of year it is impossible to keep up with the grass so we end up reducing the amount of ground that we pasture and let some of the farm go for hay. After the first cutting of hay the grass is generally starting to slow down and the cows can keep up with it. It isn't a flawless system but most years it works very well to keep the grass eating livestock well fed all year.